18 Politeness distinctions in second-person pronouns

Summary

This feature (based on WALS feature 45, by Johannes Helmbrecht) is concerned with second-person pronouns, which in some languages make a politeness distinction. A binary politeness distinction is a contrast such as tu/vous in French or tú/Usted in Spanish. Some languages even distinguish more than two degrees of politeness, by having distinct forms for intimate address, for neutral address, and for polite address. Finally, some languages use titles (as well as similar expressions such as kinship terms or names) as second-person forms. Although this option is in principle compatible with the other three values, it is distinguished as a fourth value here.